Mind Your Bits, Betty

Separation and divorce is the severing of connection with the person you may have imagined spending a lifetime with, as your goals, dreams and lifestyles will no longer be shared. As you move forward, you will find yourself processing the release of these expectations as you learn how to become a single parent and cultivate your own independent desires. 

What’s tempting during this process is projecting opinions and biases upon your ex as you witness them mold and shift into their new ways of being and lifestyle. With most breakups, a range of emotionality is experienced, and our innately human instinct is to blame, judge or even condemn the other parent’s choices, as this makes ourselves feel better in those moments, because they’re wrong and you’re right. These emotions are valid, however if you tap into how they make your body feel, it’s a much lower vibe than what you want. That inner dialogue gives us the intrinsic safety of preserving and protecting ourselves from the deep pain and personal accountability of what we need to feel and heal in our own respective process. 

If you find yourself thinking about how the other parent should put the kids to bed earlier, have less screen time, not be dating yet, stop packing lunches that way, show up more to baseball practice, treat you with more respect… your time, energy and mental capacity is, quite frankly, being leaked in those moments. 

These thoughts are projections that inevitably are not going to facilitate change and/or outcome in the other parent. Rather, the time you spend thinking about what they’re doing could be much better spent by focusing on what you want to heal, shift, expand or learn to show up better for yourself and your children. What is it YOU need to thrive? 

Next time you catch yourself judging their choices or decisions, take a moment to be very proud of witnessing this personal self-reflection, exhale a breathe to bring the attention back to your present moment, and ask yourself how you should tend to your own bits, Betty.

 

Lyndsay Campbell is a co-parenting mother of two boys, a Life Transformation Coach and
Reiki Master.